


that's why i tried to save you (but it can't be done)

by fuckingspacequeen



Series: Our Hell is a Good Life [2]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Oh I mentioned Jackson too, basically only mentions of the Stilinskis and Scott, this is mostly all Stiles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-01-18
Updated: 2014-01-18
Packaged: 2018-01-09 04:57:47
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 876
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1141705
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fuckingspacequeen/pseuds/fuckingspacequeen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Stiles is six years old when he’s recruited.</p>
            </blockquote>





	that's why i tried to save you (but it can't be done)

**Author's Note:**

> This is obviously not Sterek, but I guess it can be see as a preface to the previous piece.
> 
> Thank you to everyone for all the kind words and kudos! <3
> 
> batmaniatis beta-d once again. We love commas!

Stiles is six years old when he’s recruited.

It’s not unusual. After the second invasion, the I.F. have been systematically picking Earth’s best and brightest and leaving with them. Stiles knows this, because he’s seen children taken from his school and the school over and the school over from that.

His review sheets reveal that he’s smart, resourceful and driven.

There are brief mentions of his ADHD and the medications that he’s given to keep it under control; the higher powers seem interested in what they dub as ‘untapped potential’. Stiles swallows down the pills he’s given and still fidgets in class.

His best friend is Scott McCall, who happens to be from the same town. Their friendship starts out of necessity, because they’re both at the bottom of the year. It’s a friendship that Stiles cements, almost accidentally, when Jackson Whittemore – the most popular, if nothing else – nearly caves Scott’s skull in outside of class. The look of fear on Whittemore’s face is very, very real when Stiles tries to kill him. He doesn’t succeed but Whittemore leaves them alone after that.

After four years of training, however, he doesn’t make the cut. He’s consistently flagged down as being too attached to his parents despite high scores and an overall exemplary record. They can medicate him for the attention deficits, but they can’t stop him from loving his mom.

Scott’s transferred to Battle School. Stiles goes home.

He’s not prepared for what he finds. In the four years he’s been gone, Stiles has had two emails from his parents, both of which have been short and sweet. Stiles himself has written multiple emails, one a day for two years, approximately, and he’s never had any reply.

It’s not until he gets home, expecting everything to be fine, that he realises the reality: none of his emails ever made it into his parents’ inbox, just as none of theirs ever made it to his. He probably should have figured that one out sooner.

It doesn’t matter, anyway, because that betrayal pales in light of the fact that his mom is sick. She’s been sick for less than a year but Stiles can already see the changes in her. This isn’t the woman he’s spent four years remembering, and he can’t tell if it’s his memory that is faulty or the illness that has changed her.

He has his first panic attack in four years, and when he regains consciousness in his childhood bed, everything feels wrong.

It only gets worse from there, because Stiles is simply incapable of assimilating. He’s wound too tightly, pulled too taught, jacked too high, for any of his classes. None of the lessons make any sense to him in the format they’re presented in.

He’s used to a militarised version of events. He’s used to military history, strategy; he’s used to drills and runs and battle simulations. It’s impossible for him to reconcile any of this with the lessons he’s meant to learn now.

None of it feels like it matters, anyway. Mom is sick, and she’s going to _die,_ and Stiles wasn’t there. He hasn’t been there for four years, and now she’s a stranger to him, and she’s getting progressively worse, and there’s nothing he can do about it.

He gets a year with her, in the end.

He gets a year of his mom wasting away, of his dad slowly alienating himself; of expulsion from three different schools, of a broken wrist and a broken heart, of a constant creeping sense of dread.

His dad gets a promotion three days before mom dies, and he’s not there when it happens. Wherever he is off-world, he can’t simply come back. Stiles lays beside her, holds her hand, rests his head on her bony shoulder, pushes wispy strands of hair back from sunken-in eyes. And even when she takes her last breath, he stays with her, cries into her pillow, fists her too-big hospital gown.

He feels like an imposter during her funeral, wants to shrug away the arm his dad has around his shoulders, wants to kick and cry and scream about how _unfair_ it all is; about how wrong this all feels.

But he doesn’t, because he’s been trained to be better than that. He stands tall, shakes the hands he’s expected to shake, nods when he’s expected to nod, mutters a word or two when he’s expected to respond. Tears burn red hot at the back of his eyes, make his eyeballs feel scratchy inside his skull, make his throat close up around ashes in his mouth, but he doesn’t cry. He’s been trained better than that.

Stiles finds out the next day that his training never ended. The I.F. doesn’t invest in children just to let them go the way they ‘let Stiles go’. He feels sick to his stomach when he realises that it was just another exercise to them, just another lesson he had to learn in order to fit into the ranks. He should have known, the same way he should have known that they were censoring his communications, but he’s only ten years old.

He’s shipped out two days after mom’s funeral. Everything still tastes like ashes in his mouth.


End file.
